Friday, July 6, 2007

So, How Dilated Are You?

... Fifteen centimeters? Ten? When was the last time that you checked?

I'm standing, clutching my club soda and lime, facing down a total stranger who has just asked me when it was that I last peered down between my legs to see if the baby delivery system was opening up on schedule.

She sips her wine and doesn't blink. It's an open bar - a pre-wedding reception at a well-heeled downtown restaurant - and she's clearly been enjoying the flow of Chardonnay. But she's keeping her wits about her. Well, your doctor should be able to tell you. (Pauses, sips drink.) Or you could get your husband to look.

She's in her fifties. Well-preserved, with the polished look that wealthy older women have, the kind that haven't had work done but who go to the spa weekly. Buffed and plucked and dry-cleaned. That look. She's a piece of work. And she's clearly relishing chatting about my cervix.

Oh, I say. Well. He doesn't go down there much anymore. You know, since the baby could slide out anytime. You don't want that mucus plug hitting you between the eyes.

We stare at each other over our respective glasses. I'm determined to not let this bitch win. If she thinks that she can fluster me, she's got another think coming. You can't fluster women who are going on 11 months pregnant. I'll show her how much I'm dilated before I'm going to blink.

She smiles. No, darling, you don't! But you shouldn't let that stop you. Intercourse is the best way to bring on labour!

Touche-AY.

I smile. Oh, it's not that he isn't ever down there. He just doesn't go head first. We're doing everything we can to get this baby out.

Parry and thrust.

Well, just be sure that he gives you an orgasm.

Return and thrust.

Oh, I always make sure!

A weak return. She sips her drink and looks away, searching, no doubt, for some virgin that she can grill about hymens. I have, it seems, begun boring her.

Well.

Well.

It occurs to me that this is the hottest conversation that I will probably have for a very, very long time. And I'm having it with a fifty-something Jewish woman in an Italian restaurant while very possibly going into the early stages of labour. The nightmares, I realize, are going to be horrendous. Or, at the least, confusing.

I consider faking a big, dramatic labour pain, just to freak her out.

I consider spilling my drink and saying that my water just broke.

I consider telling her that I need to excuse myself to go have sex with my husband, to see if we can't poke that baby out for once and for all.

I do none of these things. I rattle the ice cubes in my empty glass and look around anxiously for my husband. I shuffle my fat, bloated feet and say, weakly, well, it's been lovely speaking with you. If the baby doesn't arrive tonight we'll see you at the wedding tomorrow.

She raises her glass to me and grins, wickedly. Make sure you get someone to measure that cervix!

I put my thumb and forefinger together and make a big circle, the universal symbol for "A-OK!" and "Hey! Big Vagina!", and hold it up in front of my face, and smile and nod at her from behind the hole.

I regret to this day that I did not stick my tongue through, and waggle it derisively. Except that, I'm pretty sure that she would have waggled back.

In which case, I would never have recovered.

(I would say, with the rest of the PBNers, that I would have rather just handed her THIS, but that's not true. I would rather that I had had the nerve to say something really, really dirty to her. But I do wish that soemone would have handed this book to me. Then I might have understood better what a cervix is.)

I'm about 4cm's just shy of that magic halfway point... thanks for asking... the membrane sweep was truely horrifying but seems to be doing its job as I am cramping like mad and there is enough bloddy tissue to make me think I'll squeeze this thing out in the next day or two. Oh and I haven't even bought the sautee pan and e.v.o.o. for the placenta yet! What was I thinking taking the time to come to this? sips sparkling water and bats eyelashes while rubbing aforementioned belly.

Seriously, when will these idiots learn to leave pregnant women alone???

I've got 2 1/2 weeks left before my due date and I'm already getting to the point of killing anyone who even looks at me sideways. If I had been in your place I probably would have attacked her and sent her to the emergency room!

Having never actually dilated...how you ask? Well, Papoosie Girl was a month early when my water broke and according to the nurse I was as "tight as a steel drum" when we arrived - right before the Pictocin drip started. Then there was Rosebud who was breech.

Formerly Dyspeptic, but quite ok by comparison although still blogless said...

You come across as too patient and nice. This harridan either had a case of fertility envy coupled with an umbridled tactlessness or was just beginning to show the early signs of -- god knows what. Was she auditioning for the role of The Fool in King Lear? If not, she gave a good audition. When you meet people like that, it's hard not to be an misanthrope.

I realize that my gender does not allow me the joys of pregnancy and childbirth, but if I were in your shoes I think that I might have said, "It's none of your goddamn business."

That would have been counterproductive strategy as there would not have been a story to tell about the prying, pampered woman who peppered you with questions.

I always liked Ann Landers' answer to what to say to uncomfortably personal questions-you just open your eyes real wide and say "my goodness, what a personal question! Why would you be interested in knowing that?" blink blink...ha!

I wrote that no one can check by LOOKING without those two things. And we often check with a speculum and a flashlight when someone is preterm. But the two finger method is the norm for full term pregnancies. With my smallish fingers? One finger in the cervix = 1 cm, 2 fingers, one on top of the other = 2 cm, 2 fingers side by side and touching = 3 cm...

LOL! That's hilarious. As a doula the conversation probably wouldn't have phased me at the time so I probably would have started talking to her about nipple stimulation. Then I would have walked away and realized how bizzare it all was later.

I suppose there might be something to say for a woman who feels that comfortable in talking about cervixes (cervii?) but, really, good grief. I might have offered to let her check if she was so darn nosy! HA!

Jodi, I pointed out that she was Jewish because she WAS Jewish (I would have pointed out if she were Jamaican, or British or Greek or Mormon, just to flesh her out, no pun intended). Anyway. I was going somewhere with a little joke in my head about the confusing juxtaposition of middle-aged Jewish woman/Italian restaurant/sex talk and the off-putting multi-culti nightmares that would ensue. I may not have arrived.